The 17-year-old Jewish high school graduate, Masha Bruskina, was one of many young
women during World War II who were put to death for fighting
against the Nazi règime and the first teenage girl to be publicly hanged by the
Nazis in Belorussia.

She worked as a nurse in a military hospital in Minsk, and was a member of an underground
cell which aided Soviet officers hospitalized there, to escape certain death and join the
partisans. Despite the constant danger they continued to risk their lives by
disobeying orders, sabotaging the daily routine. In 1941 the members of the cell were informed on and quickly rounded up
by Nazi officers.

Masha and two of her male comrades, Volodya Sherbateivich and Krill Trous,
were
sentenced to death by the Nazis. They were led through the streets with Masha wearing a large
placard proclaiming that they were partisans. Their
hands were tied behind their backs with cord and they were hanged one at a time, Masha
first, by the German 707 Infanteriedivision who meticulously filmed the proceedings.
The young prisoners were neither hooded nor blindfolded, and they were given no drop,
so their cruel and slow deaths would act as a stronger
deterrent to the local people who witnessed the event.

Hanging
was the preferred Nazi method for the execution for partisans as it produced
more of a public spectacle than shooting and was used to terrorize the local
populace as well as entertain the German troops ...

The execution
of Masha and her comrades took place on October 26th 1941 in the city of
Minsk and the bodies were left hanging for several
days as a grim reminder to others.

The photograph of the 1941 execution has been reproduced many times all
over the world but, in her native Belorussia, Masha Bruskina has not yet
gained recognition.Despite the weight
of overwhelming evidence, the testimony of eyewitnesses and the confirmation of
respected scholars Masha's homeland denies her identity. She may be recognized
elsewhere, but in Minsk, Belorussia, where she fought and for whom she died, the
girl in the photograph is still officially described as unknown. The
reason: Masha was Jewish.

Zoya
Kosmodemyanskaya, a 18-year-old schoolgirl from Moscow, voluntarily
joined a partisan detachment in 1941, when Nazi forces invaded Russia and
mounted an offensive in the direction of Moscow. The brutality of the Nazis
accelerated with murder, violence and terror, and on the night of the 27 November 1941, Zoya, together with two comrades, set fire
to a German stable near Moscow. Nazi officers quickly caught one of them - Wassilij Klubkow. Under interrogation he betrayed
Zoya.

The
Nazis arrested her immediately and brutally tortured her in order to get some
information on the partisan detachment. Rape, torture, and mutilation could
not break her, so they hanged her in public in
Petrishchevo near Moscow on the 29th
November 1941. Just before she was pushed off the platform with a loop about her neck
she shouted to the Nazis: 'You cant hang all 190 million of us.'

Zoya
met her death with amazing courage and demonstrated a strong streak of defiance.
Her words became a pithy saying.

In
same partisan squad with Zoya was another young russian girl, Vera Voloshina.
Several days before Zoya's execution Vera was wounded in her shoulder during
combat and captured. After torture Vera Voloshina was also publicly hanged,
later in the same day.

The
Nazis left the half-naked body of Zoya in the snow.

After
the war Zoya became the symbol of Soviet
resistance to Nazi occupation and she was posthumously decorated a Hero of the Soviet Union as was her brother,
Shura, for his service in the Red Army tank corps.